"Oh, well, time will show. Meantime you understand, don't you, Bridget,
that they are not _cheerful_ places that we are going to see? Cheerful
positions in London mean big rents, and I mean to live among people who
have to count every penny several times over, and try hard to make it
into a sixpenny bit. You and I will have sunshine and light at
Pastimes--you won't mind putting up with dullness for part of the year?"
"What would be the good of minding? You'd go, whether or not, now you'd
got your head set!" returned Bridget bluntly. She added after a pause,
"And besides, we'll be getting our own way. I'm thinking we shall be
glad of the change. It's not as much as a thought of your own will be
left to you, with Mrs Fane by your side."
"You are entirely wrong, Bridget, and it is not your place to make
remarks about Mrs Fane. Please don't let me hear you do it again."
"Yes, ma'am," murmured Bridget, turning instantly from a friend into an
automaton, as was her custom on the rare occasions when I hardened
myself to find fault. The words were submissive enough, but her manner
announced that she had said her say, and would stick to it, though
Herself, poor thing, must be humoured when she took the high horse. As
usual, I retired from the conflict with a consciousness of coming off
second best!
The next day I told Charmion that I was "engaged," and true to our
delightful agreement, she asked no questions, but quietly disappeared
into space. Then, with a ponderous feeling of running the blockade, I
put on wig and spectacles and the venerable costume which had been
provided for the occasion. Appropriately enough, it had originally
belonged to an aunt--Aunt Eliza, to wit--who had handed it to me in its
mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many _protegees_. It was
brown in colour--I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return--
and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a
mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat
accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza's back, while the skirt showed a
persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button
of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I chuckled sardonically
at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of
outline refused to be concealed by the roughest of country garments.
Certainly my grace did not survive the ordeal. What good looks I
possessed suffered a serious eclipse even before wig and spectacles went
on, and as a crowning horror, a venerable "boat-shaped" hat (another
relic of Aunt Eliza) and a draggled chenille veil.
Bridget was hysterical with enjoyment over the whole abject effect, but
I descended the stairs and passed through the great hall of the hotel
with a miserable feeling of running the blockade. Suppose I met anyone!
Suppose anyone _knew_ me! Suppose--I flushed miserably at the
thought--Charmion herself was discovered sitting in the hall, and raised
her lorgnon to quiz me as I passed by!
I need not have troubled. Not a soul blinked an eye in my direction.
If by chance a wandering glance met mine, it stared past and through me
as though I were impalpable as a ghost. My disguise was a success in
one important respect at least--there was no longer anything conspicuous
about me; I was just a humble member of society, one of the throng of
dun-coloured, ordinary-looking females, who may be seen by the thousand
in every thoroughfare in the land, but who, as a matter of fact, are not
seen at all, because no one troubles to look. By Bridget's side I
passed through the streets of London as through a desert waste.
Half an hour's journey by tube brought us to the first of the flats on
my list. It was also the first specimen of its kind which Irish Bridget
had ever seen, and the shock was severe. I found myself in the painful
position of expecting "a decent body" to live in a kitchen two yards
square, with a coal "shed" under the table on which she was supposed to
cook, and to sleep in a cupboard, screened in merciful darkness, since,
when the electric light was turned on, the vista seen through the grimy
panes was so inimitably depressing that one's only longing was to turn
it off forthwith!
"Preserve us! Indeed, if it was to die in it we were trying, it would
be easy enough, but I'm thinking we'd make a poor show of living, Miss
Evelyn! And used to the best as we are, too," said poor Bridget
dolefully.
I sprang a good ten pounds in rent at the sound of her pitiful voice,
and ran my pencil through every address below that figure.
Ten separate flats did we visit in the course of that day, and it was a
proof of what Aunt Emmeline would call my stubbornness that I came
through the ordeal without wavering. Regardless of Bridget's appealing
eyes, I led the way forward, always affecting a buoyant hope that our
next visit would be successful, while mentally I was holding a Jekyll
and Hyde argument with my inner self, as follows:--
"Impossible to live in such warrens!"
"_Other people_ manage to live in them all the year round!"
"But, as Bridget says, I have been used to the best."
"Quite time, then, that you take your share of the worst!"
"My health might suffer--"
"You have a good chance to recruit."
"I might lose my looks--"
"Disagreeable--but the world would go on, even if you did.
Incidentally, you might improve the looks of other women!"
"It would be awfully dull!"
"At first--yes! Not when you get into stride. Helping other people is
the most exhilarating of tonics."
"I have never lived in a town. I should feel cramped, prisoned, stifled
for air."
"But think how you would feel when the day came to return to Pastimes!
Wouldn't that first hour in the garden be glorious enough to repay you
for all the exile?"